Traction control for a non-moving (stuck) vehicle may be challenging due to potential customer dissatisfaction. Stuck vehicle conditions may occur when traveling up an icy drive-way, parking and/or sinking in a soft surface rut where the vehicle's driven wheels lose traction to the road surface and simply spin without moving the vehicle. When a stuck vehicle condition is sensed by a vehicle controller, traction control may be activated, either automatically or manually. Typically, traction control overrides a torque request from a driver and instead operates the engine at a reduced torque output to reduce the wheel spin by decreasing the engine torque and/or increasing wheel braking. The reduced wheel spin increases the traction between the wheels and the road surface, which may result in moving the vehicle.
On occasion, when traction control is automatically enabled by a vehicle controller, a driver may disagree with the automatic setting and the driver may wish to manually disable the traction control against the automatic setting. For example, when a driver attempts to move the vehicle from a standstill while in deep deformable material, such as snow in an unplowed driveway or parking lot. Some vehicles may be equipped with a physical ON/OFF switch to enable or disable traction control. Other vehicles may be equipped with a traction control ON/OFF switch that is a “soft” switch, such as a screen, accessed through a menu driven display on an instrument cluster. For such a “soft” switch, a driver may have to navigate through multiple display screens and settings to reach the traction control ON/OFF screen. The lack of a physical switch and the inconvenience of navigating through multiple menu screens may be annoying to a driver at times when the driver needs quick access thereto and may result in driver dissatisfaction.
There is a need for a traction control ON/OFF feature for a menu operated instrument cluster display that automatically displays the ON/OFF screen making it available to the driver at times when the driver is most likely to need access thereto.